2022 Favorite Books
It’s hard to believe that we’ve come to the end of another year. It feels like the beginning of the year wasn’t that long ago, and in the blink of an eye here we are at the end already. As 2022 comes to a close it’s time for my annual ritual of making a list of my favorite books that I read this year.
Note: None of the links below are affiliate links. I get nothing from linking to these books. I try to link to the author or publisher site when possible, and Amazon as a default.
Favorite Books 2022
- Building a Second Brain - Second Brain is Tiago Forte’s system for building and maintaining a personal knowledge base. As I get older and the complexity of computers and software development increases, having a custom reference system is essential for keeping track of the things I need to know.
- An Elegant Puzzle - Will Larson has written an excellent book about software engineering management. It includes helpful advice on nearly all areas of managing software teams and working within a larger organization. There’s a lot of good stuff in here that I will be looking to use next year.
- Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow - This book delves into ways to organizationally structure software development teams and how to enable them to interact better. It covers four base team structures and three team interaction patterns.
- Organize Tomorrow Today: 8 Ways to Retrain Your Mind to Optimize Performance at Work and in Life - This book contains eight strategies to help you with your personal organization and productivity, and it helps to figure which of the eight implement for your own use.
- Breakout: How Atari 8-bit Computers Defined a Generation - A nice history of Atari and their 8-bit home computers. For me this was a walk down memory lane as the Atari 800XL was my first home computer.
- Modern Software Engineering - This is the newest book from Dave Farley of Continuous Delivery fame. While it doesn’t necessarily offer anything new, it describes several software engineering practices and how they work together to product higher quality software faster.
- Systems Thinking Made Simple: New Hope for Solving Wicked Problems - This book describes systems thinking and how it can be applied to solve problems. It’s an interesting look at problems within the context of a larger system, and how to solve those problems while providing maximum benefit to the entire system.
- Family Discipleship - We went through this book at my church. It’s a fantastic method for parents to help disciple their families and children for those of us who don’t have seminary degrees. It focuses on using everyday “moments” and “milestones” as opportunities to share biblical teaching and spiritual growth.
- His Majesty’s Dragon - This is an alternative history fiction novel that asks the question, “What if the Napoleonic Wars included dragons?”. I found it to be an entertaining read.
- Rogue Protocol - This is the first book of the Murderbot Diaries, a series of short novels about an artificial construct that is part organic and part machine who becomes self-aware. I found it a fun read that makes you think a bit as modern technology continues to evolve in the areas of artificial intelligence and robotics.
Last year I mentioned I was going to try and do these posts more often, but that didn’t happen this year. Maybe I’ll give it another attempts in 2023. Until then, I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.